


Dirt

by Unforgotten



Category: Original Work
Genre: Extra Treat, Gen, Ghosts, POV Second Person, Rivers, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 11:00:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16474298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unforgotten/pseuds/Unforgotten
Summary: You were vast, once, and you were mighty, a rule lasting for an age.A million years after its planet's death, the ghost of an alien river finds a new purpose.





	Dirt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shadaras](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadaras/gifts).



_You were vast, once, and you were mighty, a rule lasting for an age._

_Then, you thought yourself superior to the creatures who built their houses along your shores. What was a city ten thousand years old, held up against you, who had coursed for millions upon millions of years? Their civilizations came and went; where they all turned to dust in their own time, you endured, for you had split the great continent in two long before the first of them crawled out of the water._

_It never occurred to you that you might someday dry up, become dust in your turn. In the end, you outlasted them, at least, the ones who had worshiped you ever since the first few of them came together and agreed upon how fierce your waters were, and how unfathomable. When the great tremor came, and the dust and cold followed, they huddled together and died, but you coursed ever onward. But when the dust had passed, the heat came, and the sun above seemed closer and stranger than it had been before. And the heat...the creatures that hadn't expired in the cold had nothing to defend them against its opposite. By the time the last of them had fallen still by your shores, your shores themselves had already begun to change, your courses growing more shallow by the year._

_You lived for eons, but in the end it took you less than ten thousand years to die._

***

Nothing happens for a very long time after that. The wind and sand spend those years trying to cover the great chasm that once held your body--but you were vast, and you were mighty. It is not an easy thing for them to erase you, as they erased all those others.

Then, one day, something changes, where nothing has changed for a million years. A light comes down from the sky, followed by others. They bring no tremor, no great cloud; you remember the flying things of a blotted-out civilization, and wonder.

***

It's not long afterward--only a year or two, not even a heartbeat--before a light comes toward you, unsteady in the harsh winds. You've seen many collisions in your day, covered many fools with the shroud of your waters; you're not at all surprised when this particular flying thing slams into ground that was once part of your bed. One of its wings comes off. Another part of it catches fire. ( _Fire_. You haven't seen fire since...)

Three creatures emerge from the wreckage. They're strange, nothing at all like the creatures you remember. They stand on two weak legs, have only two flimsy arms. It's enough to make you certain of how easily you could have drowned them, when you were in your prime.

"We're going to be in _so_ much trouble," the smallest one says.

"Let's not worry about that now," says the biggest one absently, occupied with the condition of the medium-sized one's left arm.

As for the medium-sized one, it's weeping; even more strangely, it's weeping from its eyes. Salt and water, water and salt; it takes only one deeper glance for you to realize how much of these creatures is made of water. Once, they would have been nothing, in comparison to yourself; now, you're struck with an envy you've never known before, one that makes you wish for the even fiercer winds to come, to blow until these creatures are buried beneath the sands, where you will not have to endure them any longer.

Neither the wind nor the sand has ever heeded your wishes, and so there's nothing for you to do but watch the creatures as they try to navigate their way "home." Presumably, they want to return to the place where the other flying things landed; but you see at once that they're going the wrong way.

At first, you mean to let them, to watch when they succumb to the heat or to the great storm that's coming. To witness the sands cover them, the way they've tried for so long to cover you. To remember that all other creatures lived for an eyeblink, while you...

In the distance, other lights, coming not from the sky but from the surface. You're almost certain, from what you remember about creatures, that it's a search party; and you're certain, from the lights' trajectory, that they're going the wrong way to find any sign of what they seek.

The three creatures see nothing of the lights, of course. To them you are a valley, with cliffs steep and imposing; neither wind nor sand nor time has ever managed to make you less, or to soften you. They cannot see above your walls, and by now they've gone far enough that it's unlikely they will ever find their way back.

***

You don't decide to save them until you do (and then only because creatures are interesting for as long as they breathe, and no longer; and you have long since grown weary of the wind and the sand). Then, it's only a matter of how.

The effects the sand and the wind have attempted, you may cause whenever you wish, for it was your waters that shaped this place, and your will that shaped the waters; if your waters are gone, your will yet remains. You could, if you knew their alphabet, write the answer on your floor, or on the cliffs in front of them. As it is, you consider a map--but the lights are far enough from what were once your banks that you can't be sure what lies between here and there.

There are other ways. It's been a million years since you bothered with this, but the dirt underneath the sand responds to you nearly as readily as the mud ever did. Soon, you've taken on the form of a harmless, gentle beast, one that was always greeted with joy and welcome wherever it went. You slither upon your belly to where the three creatures sit, arguing about which way to go. (They're all wrong, the smallest one slightly less so than the other two.)

The smallest one sees you first--and makes a sound, high-pitched and carrying. "Snake! It's a snake!"

You're not certain whether this is good or bad until all three creatures rise to their feet, and run away from you...in the wrong direction, again. 

You don't try to follow. Instead, you think back to other beasts, and reach again for dry dirt buried deep.

***

You try on the forms of five more beasts, each more harmless than the last; each one sends the creatures into flight. (After the third time, it occurs to you to take care from _where_ you approach them, so they'll at least flee in the correct direction.) Finally, you decided to stop being so careful; you take the form of a terrible beast, one that was always greatly feared by those other creatures.

This time, when you approach them, the smallest one says, "It's a puppy!"

"There's nothing there," says the biggest one. "Didn't I tell you? It's just a hallucination. There hasn't been life here for millions of years--and that's only maybe."

"It's a _puppy_ ," the smallest one repeats.

"I never heard of a puppy that had tentacles instead of ears," says the medium one, who's had little to say for the past few hours. "I'm pretty sure I wouldn't imagine one, either. And if I did, it _definitely_ wouldn't have that many legs."

It's the most promising answer yet, as you understand creatures, and so you sit on your haunches, trying to appear less venomous than you are. The creatures huddle together for a few more minutes; then, the largest commands the other two to stay where they are, and comes to you.

"Are you real, boy?" it asks, crouching down and reaching its hand toward you.

You're not sure what it wants; not for you to sting it, surely. You remain still, as still as you've been since the last puddle dried up, until one of the things at the end of its arm comes to rest on your head. It's neither a good sensation nor a bad one, though it leans towards good when the creature begins to move its hand, to stroke you.

"I don't know where we are," the creature says. "I don't know where we should be going. We might die here, and it'll be all my fault if we do."

You know, but there's no way for you to convey that there is no 'might' about it; the creatures will die without you.

The creature continues: "I don't know if you're really here or not, but if you know where we should be going, now would be a really good time."

You've listened to all three creatures speak for long enough; you can tell by its tone it doesn't expect much. 

You stand up, walk in the direction of the lights. After a minute, you turn back, to see if they're following--and they are. From what they say to each other, over the next hours and days, you know that the biggest one still thinks they're following you to their death.

***

Once, you were vast, and you were mighty. You saw the passing of a century as if it were a day. Now, in this form, you're small, infinitesimal; and if you're fearsome in your way, you're nothing compared to what you were. The minutes pass like years, and the hours like decades. In the end, you don't find the lights so much as they find the four of you.

The creatures who rush to the three are all bigger than the biggest; you realize the creatures you've found are young ones, foolish little streams wandered too far from their strength. No one ever returned a child of yours; you saw them all dry up, long before you admitted that what had happened to them would one day happen to you.

You watch them, as you've always watched; and by the time all three of the child-creatures begin to speak of the beast they followed, there's nothing left of you to see. The wind has stolen your dirt, a theft you've allowed only because you know you'll always be able to find more.

***

_Once, it was your strength that pleased you; now, you take on the form of other beasts and creatures, to show these ones the way you wish for them to go, and it is your cleverness, your subtlety that you find the most satisfying._

_By the time more settlers come--decades later, after the terraforming has begun to take hold--there are more than whispers of the spirits that haunt this planet. There are as many skeptics as there are believers, but there are enough of the latter that they've turned the tide. Once, they'd thought to build a city where your waters used to flow; now, they speak of sacred ground, a place that must be preserved._

_Some of them, too, speak of the waterways that once were, and what they could be again. The ones who speak of it are few, but already you can feel the inevitability of it, the rising tide, and you know: Whether it happens in their lifetimes or not, it will happen within yours. One day, you will live again; you will course through your old channels, create new ones wherever you so desire. One day, you will be vast and mighty, the way you were in the very beginning._

_And it will be good._


End file.
